Pru gazed steadily at Eddie Hammond over the Jag’s glossy red roof. Then she held out her hand, palm upwards. ‘I’ll drive.’

He twitched visibly.

‘Why?’

‘Because you lost your licence last week.’

Staring back at her, Eddie said nothing. Finally, wearily, he nodded.

‘Yes.’

’What was it, drink-driving?’

Eddie looked offended.

‘Certainly not. Only speeding. And jumping a red light. Nothing desperate,’ he went on defensively. ‘No big deal. They got me on points. Three months and a bit of a fine, that’s all.’

‘No wonder you didn’t want me to call the police,’ said Pru. ‘Driving when you’ve been banned.

No insurance. Causing an accident. And how much did you have to drink last night, before falling asleep in your armchair?’ She consulted her watch. ‘It’s only seven thirty. You’re probably still over the limit.’

Wordlessly Eddie passed over the keys. He knew Dulcie but had never actually spoken to Pru before. Having assumed she was the quiet, biddable one, he was experiencing a distinct sense of unease. Right now she looked about as biddable as Rudolf Hess.

He waited until Pru was driving before trying to explain.

‘I knew it was stupid of me.’ All he could tell her was the truth. ‘I just panicked. I thought Arthur was dying. I was desperate.’

The Jaguar was bliss to drive after the temperamental Mini; the gears were heaven on a shift-stick. Marvelling at the metronomic sweep of the windscreen wipers – no hiccups, no judders, none of those awful screeching bird-of-prey noises her own wipers liked to make – Pru flicked a sidelong glance at Eddie.

‘You could have phoned for a taxi.’

Wearily he shook his head.

‘Last time I did that, the bloody thing took forty minutes to turn up.’

‘What about a friend? Don’t you have any of those, to call on in an emergency?’

Since moving down from Manchester to Bath four months earlier, Eddie had discovered at first hand that all the guff about northerners being friendlier than southerners was true.

‘Plenty, thanks.’ He heard his voice sharpening but couldn’t help it. ‘I have plenty of friends.. In Manchester. How silly of me, I suppose I should have given them a ring.’

‘It was silly of you to drive.’ Pru remained calm. ‘You could have killed someone. You could,’

she pointed out, ‘have killed me.’

Eddie was beginning to wish he had. His eyes felt gritty and his head ached. He gave up.

‘So what are you going to do, call the police and turn me in?’

Pru indicated left as she turned into the entrance of Brunton Manor. He looked so crushed she couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

Her voice softened. ‘Is that what you think? Actually I wasn’t planning to.’

‘Oh.’

‘Look, phone a garage. Get my car towed away and fixed.’ Pru parked the Jag neatly by the side entrance to the club but kept the engine running. ‘Am I insured to drive this one?’

Bit late to ask now, thought Eddie, but he nodded.

‘It’s covered for any driver.’

Except banned ones.

‘Okay.’ Briskly Pru checked her watch; she was already late for work. ‘So if it’s all right with you, I’ll borrow this car until mine’s ready.’

Eddie panicked. He felt like a smoker having his cigarettes confiscated.

‘But I might—’

‘Might what?’ Pru’s delicate eyebrows lifted. ‘Need it? Oh no, you won’t need it, Eddie. You’re banned.’

Chapter 13

By the time Pru arrived back at the scene of the crash, someone else had got there before her.

The Mini was still lying on its side in the ditch but the five bulging black bin liners she had piled on to the back seat were gone.

This was a major blow; Pru’s landlord didn’t know it yet, but paying the rent depended rather heavily on the contents of those bags.

Pru, who had astonished herself this morning – she’d never been that bold and assertive with anyone in her life – now felt her eyes begin to prickle with distinctly unassertive tears. All her good clothes, fifteen years’ worth, had been stolen. It had taken her hours to wash, press and check everything, making sure no buttons were missing, no hems coming undone. The woman who ran the designer as-new shop in Carlton Street, the Changing Room, had been keen to take as many of Pru’s outfits, with their impressive labels, as she wanted to be rid of.

Pru didn’t want to be rid of any of them but it was fast becoming a question of selling either her clothes or her body, and she couldn’t imagine anyone being interested just now in her scrawny frame. Selling the clothes, on the other hand, would give her enough for six months’ rent.

Pru stared at the Mini’s empty back seat and hanging-open doors and wondered who could have nicked them. Had a smartly dressed young businesswoman spotted the car on her way to work, stopped to make sure nobody was lying hurt, and taken a peek inside one of the bags? Maybe she’d pulled out the navy-blue Escada suit, held it up against herself and thought, ‘Size 10, what a stroke of luck, let’s see what else we’ve got here ...’ Then, clearly liking what she found, had she stowed the five bin bags in the boot of her own sporty little car and zoomed off to work, happy in the knowledge that that was her spring wardrobe sorted out?

Or had a gang of school kids found the bags, torn them open and dumped her clothes in the nearest pond in disgust?

‘Don’t fret about it,’ Marion Hayes declared when Pru finally turned up at Beech Farm. Arriving two hours late, and in a posh car, meant Marion’s curiosity was aroused. Before she started work, Pru was forced to sit down, eat Hob Nobs, drink tea and tell all.

‘That’s his problem, not yours.’ Marion dismissed Pru’s worries with an airy flick of the hand.

‘Just give him an estimate stating how much the stuff was worth. He’ll send it on to his insurance people. They’ll pay up.’

Pru nodded and tried to look suitably relieved. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Marion the whole story — about Eddie Hammond being banned and therefore uninsured — not out of any sense of loyalty, but because some things were simply safer left unsaid. She didn’t fancy being arrested and slung into prison for aiding and abetting a criminal.

She couldn’t help wondering, either, just how suspicious Eddie was going to be when she suddenly presented him with a hefty additional bill for stolen frocks.

I mean, how likely did it sound, Pru thought gloomily, thousands of pounds’ worth of designer labels being nicked from the back of a clapped-out Mini? She used to buy shoes that cost more than that car.

‘Well, at least you weren’t hurt,’ said Marion, draining her tea and standing up as the clock in the hall struck nine. ‘Time I was out of here. The cows’ll be wondering when they’re going to get fed. I’ll leave you in peace.’

* * *

When Pru had finished washing up the breakfast things she scrubbed the kitchen floor. While that was drying she vacuumed through downstairs. Next she cleaned the drawing room windows.

When the floor was dry in the kitchen she threw a great pile of muddy jeans into the washing machine. Then she sat down at the table to polish silver and listen to a radio phone-in on the subject of dishonesty.

‘When my husband’s been horrible to me,’ Teresa from Tunbridge Wells was confessing with a guilty giggle, ‘I wait until he’s asleep and pinch a fiver out of his wallet. The next day I spend it on chocolate.’

Pru idly considered phoning up the programme to say if anyone listening had her bin bags, could they please give them back?

She imagined herself on the radio, appealing to the thief’s better nature: ‘The thing is, I know they’re nice clothes, but please don’t think I’m rich. Because I’m not, any more. I’m horribly broke.’

At this point, the presenter would enquire gently: ‘Pru, if it’s not too personal a question, what brought this about?’

‘Well, Gary, let me put it this way. Two months ago I had a wonderful husband, a perfect home.

I employed a cleaning woman. Now I have no husband, no home, and I work as a cleaning woman.’

‘Pru, that’s terrible. But how did it happen?’

‘How did it happen? Gary, I’ll tell you how it happened. Some husbands do the routine thing, they have flings with their secretaries. But my husband had to be different, Gary. He didn’t even have the decency to have an affair with his secretary, oh no, he had to be different, didn’t he? He had to go and do it with our cleaner.’

‘Pru, are you all right?’

Pru leapt a foot out of her chair. Marion was standing in the doorway giving her an extremely odd look.

Horrified, Pru realised she was pressing a half-polished silver candlestick to her ear, holding it like a telephone.

Hastily she pretended to be testing its temperature against her sizzling cheek. ‘Oh hi! Amazing, don’t you think, how the harder you rub, the warmer it gets?’

‘Pru, you could have bumped your head in the crash.’ Marion sounded nervous. ‘Maybe you should see a doctor after all.’

Liza had never really felt guilty before. It was awful; she didn’t like it one bit. She wondered how long she would have to wait until it went away.

She was doing the stupidest things too, indulging in the kind of antics usually reserved for obsessed ex-lovers. Although the Songbird was miles out of her way, Liza found herself driving past it two or three times a week. Her stomach churning, she would count the number of cars in the restaurant’s tiny car park and try to figure out how many customers were inside.

Not many, by the look of things.

Once or twice she had phoned the restaurant, pretending to have dialled a wrong number, just to see if it sounded busy.

She even persuaded Dulcie to go along there one Friday evening, to report back on atmosphere and food. Dulcie dragged a protesting girlfriend with her — ‘God, Dulcie, can’t we go somewhere else? That place has had some terrible reviews’ — and enjoyed her meal but was hugely disappointed not to bump into Kit Berenger.

‘I thought he said he’d eaten there loads of times,’ she complained to Liza the next day. ‘I was really looking forward to meeting him again. Lying toad, I bet he never sets foot in the place.

What a swizz.’

‘But the food was fine?’ prompted Liza, bursting for details. ‘What did you have? Take me through each course.’

‘I can’t remember,’ Dulcie protested. She gave Liza a ‘you’re weird’ look. ‘We had three bottles of Côtes de something, told each other millions of dirty jokes and had to be poured into a taxi.

Isn’t that good enough?’

’You are hopeless.’

‘If you’re so desperate to check out the food, go there yourself.’ Dulcie was miffed. Honestly, do someone a favour and all you got was abuse.

‘Oh right, I’ll do that,’ said Liza with some sarcasm. ‘I’m sure they’ll welcome me with wide-open arms.’

Heavens, Liza could be thick. Dulcie rolled her eyes in despair. ‘Do what you did last time, stupid. Go in disguise.’

The mechanics at Joe’s Autos had a great laugh when they heard what Eddie Hammond wanted them to do to Pru’s car.

Joe explained to Eddie over the phone the meaning of the technical term write-off.

‘Basically, when a car like this has a headlight smashed, it’s a write-off. Repairing the headlight is going to cost more than the car’s worth, d’you see? And I’ve had a good look at the damage to the passenger door, the wing, the wheel arch, the bonnet ... it’s just not worth it, Mr Hammond.

You’re talking five hundred quid’s worth of repairs on a total rust heap.’

‘I know, I know,’ said Eddie with a sigh, ‘but do it anyway.’

The car was ready three days later. Eddie dialled the number Pru had left with him. A spaced-out-sounding hippy answered, mumbling, ‘Yeah man, like, I’ll get her, okay?’

About half an hour later, Pru picked up the phone. Eddie wondered who the hippy was; a son, maybe? God help her if that was her husband.

But it was hardly the kind of question you could ask over the phone. He switched into brisk mode instead.

‘Pru? Eddie Hammond. Your car’s here waiting for you, all fixed and ...’ No, no, he could hardly say as good as new. ‘.. . um, raring to go. So if you’d like to bring back the Jag we can do a swap.’

‘Right.’ Pru wondered why garages always did that. When you were desperate to get your car back, it took them a fortnight just to change a wheel nut. When, on the other hand, you were enjoying yourself thoroughly, zipping around Bath in a bright-red Jaguar, they managed to carry out six months’ worth of repairs in no time flat.

Full of spite, garage mechanics.